this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Should be 1gbps asymmetric now, with a near future goal of 1gbps symmetric.
I'd be okay with 200mbps symmetric, with a future goal of 1gbps symmetric. More than ANYTHING, I'm tired of providers providing things like 1gbps down, 10mbps up. And then doing shit like "Here's you're 1gbps plan with a 1tb data cap!"
The asymmetrical aspect of cable will be here to stay. Fiber can do it because it was build on a different foundation.
Copper cable transmits data using electric signals in various frequencies. There are a batch of frequencies reserved for phone and TV. ALL of the tv programming is constantly streamed to your lines whether you have TV or not and whether you pay for it or not. It’s encrypted and is only decrypted by your cable boxes when your provider says they can decrypt it. The phone frequencies are reserved so you can make phone calls and still max out your download.
So what about the rest of the bandwidth? Well, way back in the early days of cable it was pretty much everyone for themselves. Every company did things its own way. That’s where DOCSIS came in. It’s a platform that allows modem manufacturers to make modems that will work on any cable network that supports Docsis. And the key part is that DOCSIS is always backwards compatible. The network upgrade to 3.1 did not break the old d2 devices.
When it was developed the download was extremely more necessary than the upload. You’d be sending small single line commands on upload and receiving entire files in download. So more frequencies went to download than upload. In a lab setting 1.0 could reach 40mbps down and 10 up. That’s not what was sold because real life isn’t a lab and there’s loss over large distances. Realistically most people got 10 mb down and upload wasn’t even listed.
Whats changed? Well today those same download and upload frequencies are still used. We’ve added more around them to deliver higher speeds. But we’ve also kept the same principles that people need more download than upload. Docsis 3.1 was released in 2013. We really didn’t start stressing over upload until Covid and work from home had us on zoom calls all day.
Docsis 4.0 is technically released but requires quite a bit of overhaul to work with existing networks. We pretty much need to do away with cable tv. That’s why many ISP’s are pushing IPTv. It removes the need for all that bandwidth devoted to just TV. If everyone in a region drops traditional cable for IPTv they can easily switch to d4. D4 does increase upload but does not make it symmetrical.
Your cable company does not decide their highest tier realistically. It’s the most that medium will offer. It’s gonna be a while too for d4 to be available everywhere. Everyone would need to drop traditional cable (which is honestly a nice move regardless) and people don’t upgrade plans very often. When I worked in tech support I would frequently deal with customers complaining about slow speeds while on plans from 2002.
They could drop the 200 or so channels that no one fucking watches and use that spectrum for more channels for cable internet upstream. It's entirely possible, with today's tech. Uploads were chopped down to nothing for the simple reason that people were using that bandwidth in the early days to share pirated material.
The technology is there, but we need to free up that space. Cable companies don’t just do things to their own beat. Cable Labs is the one responsible for organizing how that bandwidth is used and removing the cable frequencies to open up more internet frequencies is literally the next step.
But you need to do entire markets at a time. We can’t just upgrade the people that move to IP tv because at a certain point they share lines with people who haven’t upgraded so that bandwidth is already used.
Everyone needs to upgrade in an area to allow the business to reallocate that bandwidth. What you described is literally what is in progress right now. It just takes time
False. Comcast is finally caving and is beginning to roll out 2 gig symmetrical https://www.engadget.com/comcast-starts-squeezing-2-gbps-symmetrical-internet-speeds-through-decades-old-coaxial-cables-143657830.html
That’s just because they’re not maxing the download. They could push a few a few more gigs download in the same package but that’s close to the cap for upload. That’s like a provider being capable of 1G down and 50 meg up offering a 50 down and up plan. Just marketing is all that is
No, you're moving the goal post. A company like Comcast offering a symmetrical service is huge, regardless of what the underlying technology is capable of. They could have been offering 200 megs symmetrical with Docsis 3.0, but they didn't. They restricted customers to 11mbit uploads. This is a big deal
Except they literally couldn’t? Official documentation for 3.0 is 100 up and 1G down in a lab setting. As someone who’s actually tested that with an ISP it doesn’t work in the real world. 500/50 was what was achievable in most cases. Then 3.1 pushed the download with OFDM splits, but practical applications still couldn’t hit the 1G they got in lab environments. 3.0 was never advertised to hit 200 up and 3.1 hasn’t actually hit it in real world. 4.0 will get us closer to symmetrical max.
I will say that Comcast being the biggest ISP does likely mean they’ll reach true d4 first but to my knowledge they haven’t achieved it yet.
Great info, thanks.
All right I have 1000 seconds of internet, what a deal
My isp used to offer 10mbps up for like a decade, they have recently downgraded it to 5mbps for new subscribers. I've uploaded a few things with it and it's extremely slow. If it wasn't that I'm only paying $40 for 1gbps down, I'd have switched.
~500Kb/s. Yay.....
Things with caps aren't terrestrial broadband. You can have caps on cell based networks and still be considered broadband. One of the biggest issues is it companies like Comcast and AT&t will offer broadband service in an area but not necessarily offer only broadband service or not let you buy broadband service about also having their TV. And then they claim they're serving the area because they have broadband speeds or you can pay a bunch of money to have your service uncapped but that's not really the point of having a broadband connection available in the area.
Comcast is Terrestrial Broadband and has a 1tb cap. You are simply wrong.
Comcast has broadband speed plans. They also charge you an extra $30 if you don't have a TV bundle and then give you an actual broadband plan that's unlimited. They have also been throwing the unlimited data and router and security bs in more competitive areas but that's not a nationwide product.
I literally can't do half of what I want to do online efficiently or in a timely manner because I can barely crack 10 up. I do video work on the side. Takes hours if not days for me to upload something. Even pictures nowadays. Great I've got a DSLR for a phone and I can shoot raw. Takes 5 mins to upload a pic.
I really wish symmetric broadband was standard. Having 500 down (as a homelabber especially) means nothing if you have only 25 up 😭
Homelabber here, stuck in Comcast hell with 10Mbps upload.
I wish I could afford to bring the local municipal fiber to my house, but to go like 2 city blocks with it would be tens of thousands of dollars. :(
I'm considering a local colocation/ datacenter to move my homelab to. But then it wouldn't be a homelab anymore
Same boat here with Comcast. I would gladly give up some of the 800Mbps download to increase the 12Mbps upload speed I'm getting.
800Mbps*
*with SPEEDBOOST! (We throttle lawl)
We don’t throttle to our company-owned Speedtest servers though so we can disprove you when claiming we are not offering you peak speeds.
Worse, they do that crap for my business account. Great for the vpn to the office.
It's normal for businesses to pay for peak and total bandwidth. That's one of the reasons why they guarantee speed and availability and should be refunding you if they don't meet those.
You get a terabyte cap? Jfc, where I live it’s like a few gigs, and that can cost into the hundreds for maybe 25.
Yeah states with Comcast caps you at 1.2TB unless you pay $50 for the unlimited plan, which I don't think is even offered everywhere. They discount it to $30 if you use their modem.
How much do they charge you to use their modem?
They recently changed the prices. It's $30 extra with your own modem or free of you use theirs since they'll also use it to supply others with free 'hot spots' and cellular service.
Uhhh, how does that work? I’m hoping separate passwords!
Comcast has been doing this for over a decade I believe. By default their routers advertise a hotspot exclusive to other Comcast subscribers. Not sure the security behind it since it’s not technically a password just authenticate via your Comcast account. But I agree it is crazy lol I had a similar reaction when I first found out.
At least it’s not your own password. Someone with a weak account password might get trouble, hopefully not you,